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Welcome to the June issue of the Danley Sound Labs newsletter. We've spent the last several weeks fervently preparing for the annual InfoComm Show which opens this week in Las Vegas. As usual, Danley is "All In" for the show. You can sit in on educational seminars by Doug Jones and Tom Danley. You can visit the Danley booth (C670) on the show floor to meet part of our team and see new products. And, of course, you can join us in the Danley demo room (N108) on the even hours. The Danley demo always creates a buzz and is a highlight of the show. Anybody remember last year's Nano introduction? Be prepared for your mind to be blown by yet another Danley innovation this year! (Hint: Don't go in the water!)
Be sure to check out Doug Jones' brand-new series as well as Josh Millward's amp discussion in this abbreviated edition of the newsletter.
See you in Vegas!
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Danley is once again contributing to the educational program at InfoComm. Doug Jones and Tom Danley will be presenting three different seminars:
June 5th 8 AM to 12 PM “The Future of Horns”
June 5th 1-3 PM "Maker Lab" A maker lab is sort of a play space/workshop where the participants are given a box of “junk” and have 2 hours to build a working loudspeaker from the stuff in the box.
June 6th 10:30 to 12 PM “Subjective Evaluation of Loudspeakers”
As well as the code for getting a pass through Danley: If you are coming to the show, follow the link below.
Use the code DAN895. Hope to see you in Vegas June 6-8!
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Danley Rental Gear: Got some? Need Some?
Got Danley gear that you would rent out to others? Want people to know how to find you? Go to the Danley rental page and fill out the rental submission form. We'll add you to the map!
Do you have a special gig coming up where you need a great Danley system but don't have all the gear you need? It's possible that there is rental gear available in your area. Check out the rental map on our website to find out where you can rent the Danley system of your dreams.
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June 1, 2018
DNA Amps at InfoComm 2018
By: Josh Millward
The annual InfoComm show in the USA is upon us once again. Danley Sound Labs will be there showing off the latest and greatest in loudspeaker and amplifier technologies. The demo room will be powered by our DNA amplifiers
All five of the DNA amplifier models will be on display in the booth on the show floor:
- DNA 5K4c: 4 channels, 1250 Watts per channel at 2 Ohms
- DNA 10K4 Pro: 4 channels, 2500 Watts per channel at 2 Ohms
- DNA 20K4 Pro: 4 channels, 5000 Watts per channel at 2 Ohms
- DNA 3K8 Pro: 8 channels, 400 Watts per channel at 2 Ohms
- DNA 10K8 Pro: 8 channels, 1250 Watts per channel
On hand will also be the DNA SC48 digital signal processor. This brings all of the signal processing and networking capabilities of the DNA Pro series amplifiers into a DSP only platform that can be used with any other outboard amplifiers, or as a system controller to manage the zones of a larger system.
We are working towards a new release of the System Engineer software. This will feature a number of enhancements and improvements. Keep an eye open for this update coming after the show.
The current version of System Engineer is 7.00.15. This version is available for download from our website:
http://www.danleysoundlabs.com/dna-system-engineer/
The current version of firmware for the DNA 10K4 Pro and DNA 20K4 Pro amplifiers is 1.306.
The current version of firmware for the DNA SC48 is 1.394.
Loudspeaker Master Preset Stack version is 20170424
The firmware and loudspeaker presets are included in the System Engineer download zip file for System Engineer 7.00.15.
DNA product videos can be found on our website:
http://www.danleysoundlabs.com/danley-u/dna-amplifier-and-processor-training-videos/
< < < End Newsletter Text > > >
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Alessandro Volta
Prof. Doug Jones
This month I am starting a new series of articles that is somewhat of a departure from what we usually do here. I thought the readers might be interested in the people whose names we use all the time like Volt (Volta), but possibly know very little about. I’m going to start off with Alessandro Volta.
First a brief refresher course on the unit that bears his name. The rigorous definition of the Volt is:
“ the practical meter-kilogram-second unit of electrical potential difference and electromotive force equal to the difference of potential between two points in a conducting wire carrying a constant current of one ampere when the power dissipated between these two points is equal to one watt and equivalent to the potential difference across a resistance of one ohm when one ampere is flowing through it”[1]
Now, for some readers, that definition may be difficult to understand. Electricity is often explained using water analogies. Water analogies are helpful to begin to explain the basics, but ultimately can be misleading. So, with that disclaimer firmly in place, measuring voltage is like measuring the potential difference that exists when you have a huge mass of water stored in tank 100 feet above the ground. In the water analogy, the force is gravity. Getting the water 100 feet above ground level requires work: moving the mass of water against the pull of gravity. Once the water is in the tank, there is stored potential energy. If the same amount of water were stored at 50 feet, there would be less potential, and if the water were stored at 200 feet there would be more potential. That potential would be measured between the ground and the tank. In electricity, the Volt is used to describe the potential difference between two points in a circuit. The higher the voltage, the greater the potential difference is between those two points.
Voltas’ story begins in 1745. In 1745, The United States was not yet formed. It was still a collection of royal colonies. George II was King of England. The Industrial Revolution was just beginning to get underway. Electricity was pretty much a novelty. The first practical steam engine was a few decades away. Anesthesia and Dynamite were both 100 years in the future. JS Bach, at age 60, was still at work on his Mass in B minor. The art world was in a bit of a slump, especially when compared to the prodigious output of the Renaissance, which ended about 100 years earlier. China was 100 years into the Qing Dynasty. Africa was still unexplored and un-exploited by the Europeans, except for a few coastal areas in West Africa, which were by this time heavily involved in slave trade.
This was the world that welcomed Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta, on February 18th 1745. He was born in Como, Italy, an ancient town which can trace its roots back to at least 196 BC when it was conquered by the Roman Empire. As a young child, Volta was unable to speak, and by age four his family was beginning to give up hope that he would live any sort of normal or productive life. Soon after he turned four, Volta suddenly and dramatically changed and by the age of 7 he was one of the brighter students in his school[2]. By the age of 17, he was fluent in his native Italian, as well as French, Latin and English and was reading in German, Russian, Dutch, Spanish and Ancient Greek.[3] His parents wished for him a career in law, but Volta was interested in physics as well as chemistry and electricity. In his early twenties, Volta began corresponding with some of the preeminent experimental researchers in Europe. At the age of twenty-four, he wrote a dissertation on the force of attraction of “electrical fluid” and sent it to the eminent Professor of Physics at Turin. In 1774 at the age of twenty-nine, Volta was named Professor of Physics at the Royal School in Como. Although Volta is known for his work with electricity, he was also a serious student of chemistry. After learning of Benjamin Franklin’s work with “flammable air” in 1776, Volta found methane gas in a nearby swamp and was able to collect and isolate it. He invented what he called the Voltaic pistol which caused a volatile mixture of gases to explode when ignited by a spark in a closed chamber. His Voltaic pistol has been called the predecessor to the internal combustion engine. [4]
One of the biggest obstacles to researching electricity in Voltas’ day was the inability to produce a constant flow of current. Researchers would use rudimentary capacitors, which could store a charge for periods of time, however, that electric charge had to come from somewhere external to the capacitor. The capacitor could produce current for brief periods, and then would have to be re-charged. Voltas’ most important contribution to the world of electricity occurred in 1799 when he invented a device which could supply a constant flow of electricity for an extended period of time.
Voltas’ discovery came about in a rather odd fashion. One of Volta’s friends, a physician and physicist named Luigi Galvani, had been experimenting with dissected frogs’ legs. He found that when he touched a nerve with certain metals the frog legs would twitch. Galvani believed he had discovered a new form of electricity, a sort of “animal electricity” generated by the frog legs. At first, Volta, was impressed with Galvani’s work and even successfully duplicated Galvani’s experiments. Soon Volta began to wonder if the frogs’ legs were reacting to electricity rather then producing it. He wondered if maybe the metals used in Galvani’s experiments were generating the current that were making the frog legs twitch, and set out to dis-prove the “animal electricity” theory. Voltas questioning of Galvanis’ theory set up a rather contentious rivalry between the two scientists that divided the scientific community for a number of years. As an attempt to disprove Galvanis’ theory, Volta built a device which produced electrical current without any animal tissue at all, proving that animal tissue was not necessary to the production of electricity. His device consisted of stacks of alternating silver and zinc discs, with pieces of saltwater soaked cloth in between. When a conductor was connected to the ends of this “pile” of discs, current would flow.[5] Volta found that the more discs he added to the pile, the more current he could produce.
In 1800, Volta wrote a letter to the Royal Society in London, in which he described the world's first chemical battery. It is for this accomplishment his name is immortalized. This discovery and invention made Volta something of a celebrity throughout his native Italy and indeed, the whole of Europe. Volta was invited to present his work in the Royal Court of France where he was befriended by Napoleon Bonaparte, who conferred upon him the title Count in 1801.[6] It was the invention of the battery that opened the door to further research in electromagnetism and made possible the harnessing of electricity for practical uses.
In 1815, when Volta was 70 years old, he was asked if he was a man of faith. Here is his reply:
“I do not understand how anyone can doubt the sincerity and constancy of my attachment to the religion which I profess, the Roman, Catholic and Apostolic religion in which I was born and brought up, and of which I have always made confession, externally and internally. I have, indeed, and only too often, failed in the performance of those good works which are the mark of a Catholic Christian, and I have been guilty of many sins: but through the special mercy of God, I have never, as far as I know, wavered in my faith... In this faith I recognize a pure gift of God, a supernatural grace; but I have not neglected those human means which confirm belief and overthrow the doubts which at times arise. I studied attentively the grounds and basis of religion, the works of apologists and assailants, the reasons for and against, and I can say that the result of such study is to clothe religion with such a degree of probability, even for the merely natural reason, that every spirit unperverted by sin and passion, every naturally noble spirit must love and accept it. May this confession which has been asked from me and which I willingly give, written and subscribed by my own hand, with authority to show it to whomsoever you will, for I am not ashamed of the Gospel, may it produce some good fruit!”[7]
Volta died peacefully at his home in Como Italy at the age of 82 on March 5, 1827. In 1881 the International Electrical Congress adopted the Volt as the unit of electromotive force in his honor.
[1] Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 29 May 2018.
[2] "Alessandro Volta - Como and the bicentenary of the invention of the Pila 1799-1999", Como 1999 " by Umberto Ferdinando Molteni (I2MS).
[4] from http://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/alessandro-volta
[5] from http://lemelson.mit.edu/resources/alessandro-volta
[6] Engineering and Technology Wiki, http://ethw.org/Alessandro_Volta
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